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Charles M. Schulz–The Complete Peanuts: 1955-1956: The Definitive Collection of Charles M. Schulz’s comic strip masterpiece: Dailies & Sundays (2005)

Posted in A Charlie Brown Christmas, Baseball, Built to Spill, Charles Schulz, Comic Strips, Ding Dong School, Fantagraphics, Figure Skating, Football, Funny (ha ha), Matt Groening, Peanuts, Walter Cronkite on October 2, 2015| Leave a Comment »

1955SOUNDTRACK: BUILT TO SPILL-Perfect from Now On (1997).

330px-Perfect_From_Now_OnBuilt to Spill moved to the major labels and everything changed. No that’s not true. The band (well, Doug mostly) just sounds more serious about their music. What’s impressive is that there are no obvious  singles since each song is over 5 minutes long (except for one).

This is considered a classic 90s album but fans of the band and others.  And while I like it, it’s not my favorite.  A few of the songs are a little too drifty and anticlimactic.  But at he same time there’s some really amazing stuff here.

It opens with “Randy Describing Eternity” a cool song with a great riff and an interesting lyrics.  My favorite song (most days) on this record is “I would Hurt a Fly.” It has a fairly quiet intro with more intriguing lyrics: “I can’t get that sound you make out of my head/ I can’t even figure out what’s making it.”  The song waxes and wanes and even adds some cello. And then at 4 minutes, the song shifts gears entirely, stopping to add a brand new fast section with some great guitar work and wild noisy soloing.

“Stop the Show” is another favorite.  It opens with a slow meandering guitar section and then jumps to a great, frenetic set of verses. After about 5 and a half minutes the song turns into a crazy noisy fest and then switches to an amazingly catchy guitar instrumental solo outro, which could frankly go for five more hours. “Made Up Dreams” has several different elements in it. And even though it’s only 4:52, it still packs in a lot of music.

“Velvet Waltz” is over 8 minutes long. It has slow parts, and a lengthy middle section with strings (in waltz time of course). It builds slowly adding some cool guitar sections and a great long solo at the end. “Out of Site” is one of the shorter songs on the disc.  It has an immediate, fast section that is very catchy. It then mellows out to a slow cello-filled section. “Kicked it in the Sun” is kind of trippy.  At four and a half minutes a noisy section overtakes the music, but behind the noise is a beautiful, pretty guitar/keyboard melody.  Then it shifts out of the noise into a more rocking catchy section.

The final song is the nearly 9 minute “Untrustable/Part 2.”  It begins loud with great lyrics “You can’t trust anyone because you’re untrustable.”  Like the other songs it has several parts.  Around 4 minutes it turns into another song altogether. This continues for a bit and then at 7 minutes it shifts gears entirely into a keyboard dominated romp.

There’s so many interesting melodies and changes in this album, and it clear that it was completely influential on late 90s indie rock.  But I think what’s even more impressive is that each album get a little bit better.

[READ: September 29, 2015] The Complete Peanuts 1955-1956

Moving on to volume 3 of the Complete Peanuts.  Stylistically things are advancing towards the Peanuts characters we know now.  Yet they haven’t quite gotten there.  I think the kids’ faces (not their heads, just features) are still much smaller.  And Snoopy still looks like a real dog, although his nose grows year by year.

In the beginning of the year, there’s a funny line from Lucy, attacking commericalism. Charlie is reading her a book.  He says “Once upon a time they lived happily ever after.  The end”  And Lucy says “What’s on the rest of these pages, Advertising?”  Much later there a joke in which Lucy asks Schroeder how much a musician makes, and he relies “Money?  Who cares about money?  This is art. You Blockhead.”  It is ironic of course that Schulz went on to become so staggeringly wealthy–but maybe that just shows what good art can achieve.

Another one of my favorite sophisticated jokes comes when Lucy is flying a kite.  The joke is all about perspective. It’s hilarious. (more…)

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Charles M. Schulz–The Complete Peanuts: 1953-1954: The Definitive Collection of Charles M. Schulz’s comic strip masterpiece: Dailies & Sundays (2004)

Posted in Barney Google, Baseball, Charles Schulz, Comic Strips, Cœur de Pirate, Fantagraphics, Figure Skating, Football, Funny (ha ha), Peanuts, Regina Spektor, Walter Cronkite on September 25, 2015| Leave a Comment »

1953SOUNDTRACK:CŒUR DE PIRATE-Cœur de pirate (2008).

Coeur-de-pirate-albumCœur de Pirate is the band name of Béatrice Martin, a Québécois singer and piano prodigy.  She was 19 when she released this album (and was accepted into conservatory school in Montreal when she was nine).

Given her musical background, one might expect more elaborately created music–more chamber pop, perhaps.  But this debut album is delightfully sweet and spare indie pop.  It is primarily simple piano songs with occasional extra accompaniment.

Most of the songs are simple, with unfussy arrangements and Martin’s beautiful voice.  The songs verge from charming piano melody to simple waltz to piano instrumental and a few upbeat almost dancey songs.  There’s even a guitar based song that adds a folk feel to the album.

There are 12 songs and the album runs only to 30 minutes.  It is charming and delightful.  The only thing I didn’t like so much was when Jimmy Hunt duets with her on “Pour un infidèle.” It’s not that I disliked his voice (which I did grow to appreciate after a few listens) it’s that his voice removes you from the insular little world that Martin has created.  When I am in it I don’t want any distractions.

The album definitely has a Francophone feel to it (her songs were described as “bringing la chanson française to a whole new generation of Quebec youth”) although she does remind me a bit of Regina Spektor’s later songs, too.

She also had a fluke hit with “Ensemble” when it was used with a funny baby based YouTube video that went viral (I’ve posted that at the bottom of the page).

You can listen to the whole album below

[READ: September 17, 2015] The Complete Peanuts 1953-1954

Moving on to volume 2 of the Complete Peanuts.  As 1953 opened, the characters remained in that older style–Snoopy still looks a lot like a dog, and Charlie’s head is still much bigger (or actually I guess his face is still smaller).  By the end of the book, they have morphed a little closer to the Peanuts most of us are familiar with, but they still look “different.”

I enjoy the way the Schulz celebrates the holidays with a simple but nice sentiment (Schroeder playing his piano with the music staff reading “Happy New Year”).  Indeed, Schulz celebrates most holidays.  Valentine’s Day, Income Tax Day (!) and of course, he has lots of fun with Hallowen (no great pumpkin yet though).

This volume seems to be a lot about Lucy (which may be why she is on the cover).  In the first few strips she gets expelled from nursery school.  Later on she quits nursery school because they didn’t teach how to be a nurse.  Lucy also tends to have a regular punchline, with regard to Schroeder of “I’ll probably never get married.”  Lucy also begins in earnest her counting career–trying to count all the stars (and getting exhausted) or all the raindrops, or the amount she jumps rope.  And she is still a fussbudget, with a joke at the end of 1954 having Schroeder compose the “Fuddbudget Sonata” for her.

Linus, who is still a baby, has taken to “shooting” people with his finger  (he struggles to crawl for a ball only to have Snoopy walk up and take it away, so he looks at Snoopy and says “bang”).  He is still crawling and toddling for much of the year, although by the end he seems to be growing up.  Nevertheless, Lucy is still giving him a hard time–constantly shouting at him when he is not looking and then commenting that “he’s awfully nervous.”

There’s a lot of baseball jokes as they move into spring (how did he keep coming up with original baseball jokes after all those years?) inducing jokes about sponsorship.  And then Lucy starts taking up golf (and is very good at it).

Schroeder continues to play beautifully (and to get upset by everyone who bothers him, especially Lucy and Snoopy.  He has a crisis of conscience when he says “sometimes I thin I like Brahms even better than Beethoven.”

Schulz included some occasionally topical material.  So there’s a joke about the popularity of “Doggie in the Window”  (It went to number 1 in April of 1953 and stayed there for 8 weeks).  Snoopy has been listening to it all day.

And of course there is a ton about Snoopy too.  he still looks like a dog and still does a lot of doggie things (and Schulz is always spot on with them).  I really like the joke where Snoopy eats a moth and then coughs up the dryness.  Or when he falls asleep under a tree and wakes up covered in leaves.  There are even a few jokes in which Snoopy hates being patted on the head.  And of course, Snoopy just loves zooming around (especially through croquet hoops).  This is mostly like Snoopy giving everyone a hard time, especially Charlie Brown (with the constant refrain of “You drive me crazy”).

One thing that I like about these early strips is that even though Charlie Brown has a lot of angst, he also has a great deal of self-confidence.  Like when he is mad at Violet and the punch line is “but I know you don’t think I’m Perfect)  There’s even a funny joke (or series of jokes) about graffiti on a fence (!).  In one, it says “Charlie Brown loves all the girls” (in another it says “Charlie Brown loves Charlie Brown”).

The TV jokes continue (I especially like the one with Shermy watching and the screen clears up to say Why Aren’t You in School?).  Most of them are variations on people sitting on front of each other. and blocking the view.

In June of 1954, Schulz uses the word security to refer to Linus’ blanket (evidently coining the phrase “security blanket”), which continues in one form or another throughout the book.  Linus starts to become really smart–outwitting Charlie Brown at houses of cards and magic tricks and the wonderful punchline of him blowing up a square balloon.

The biggest change comes in July 1954 with the addition of Pig Pen or ‘Pig Pen’ as he was first called. He doesn’t do a lot but it leads to a lot of jokes about being dirty.

And in December 1954, a new short-lived character named Charlotte Braun (or Good Ol’ Charlotte Braun) enters the strip.  She has wild curly hair and talks very loudly.  She is something of a foil to Charlie, but she is never really developed.

The book has a Foreword by Walter Cronkite.  He says that he was supposed to interview Schulz, but on the day they were scheduled, he took ill.  So Cronkite never got to meet with Schulz.  This is shame although I have to say that Schulz and Cronkite were such huge figures that they certainly should have met many times over the years.

Cronkite reveals a bit more about the Schulz’ Sparky nickname–that he was given the nickname by an uncle who was referencing the horse Spark Plug in the Barney Google strip.  I like Cronkite’ summary:

Now here you have a confluence of coincidences that would never be accepted even by the producers of a Hollywood pot-boiler.  A baby nicknamed after a cartoon characters growing up to be one of the greatest and most popular cartoonist of all time!

Cronkite also praises Schulz’ economy of dialogue and illustration and likewise keeps his own foreword brief as well.

I’m really excited about continuing through the years with these books.

For ease of searching I include Coeur de Pirate, Beatrice Martin, Quebecois, francaise

And here’s that (very funny) viral video that used the Cœur de pirate song:

[youtube-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vNxjwt2AqY]

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Charles M. Schulz–The Complete Peanuts: 1950-1952: The Definitive Collection of Charles M. Schulz’s comic strip masterpiece: Dailies & Sundays (2004)

Posted in Baseball, Be Good Tanyas, Charles Schulz, Comic Strips, David Michaels, Fantagraphics, Figure Skating, Football, Frazey Ford, Funny (ha ha), Garrison Keillor, Peanuts, St. Paul Pioneer Press, The Saturday Evening Post, Tiny Desk Concert on September 18, 2015| Leave a Comment »

1950SOUNDTRACK: FRAZEY FORD-Tiny Desk Concert #73 (August 15, 2010).

frzeyFrazey Ford used to be in the Be Good Tanyas.  Here she is touring her debut solo album Obadiah.  She is quite a character, wearing a leopard print outfit.

But her music is really complex and interesting.  On the opener, “Firecracker” she plays the guitar with unusual chord progressions but it’s her voice that is so arresting.  She use atypical phrasings and pronunciations that belie her origins (I could never guess where she was from).  Strangely, I get a kind of Cat Stevens vibe from the way she says words, but also another inexplicable emphasis: the way she pronounces exploding as explohdun.

She talks briefly about her new record while apologizing for having to tune her guitar.  “Lost Together” slower, pretty song.

“If You Gonna Go” is a breakup song which she messes up and then apologizes for, saying she’s nervous and very tired.  And she mocks herself for wearing a ridiculous cheetah outfit.  She says she bought it in London where everyone was dressed like this.  Stephen Thompson chimes in that if it was cooler they’d all be dressed like that.

She asks if they want one more and she ends with “The Gospel Song.”

It’s a really good introduction to an unusual voice.

[READ: September 10, 2015] The Complete Peanuts 1950-1952

After reading the Sunday Peanuts books, I had to go back and start the series from the beginning.  Holy cow, Peanuts started in October 1950 and ran into the 21st century!  That’ amazing.  It’s also amazing to see how different everyone looked back then.  It’s very disconcerting.  The only thing more disconcerting is to immerse yourself in the old comics, start to really appreciate them, and then see a contemporary version and wonder why he changed them so much.

When the strip first started there were just three of them: Good Ol’ Charlie Brown, Shermy and Patty (not Peppermint Patty) and they are all four years old.  Those first comics are really really different–the kids are practically stick figures.  (Although Charlie always had that little wisp of hair).  The kids all have huge heads and tiny bodies and are very minimal in their expressions.  Snoopy is there too and he looks very much like a real dog.  As it turns out I like this version of snoopy better than the current one.  He looks much more like a dog and he acts alike a dog–Schulz gets some great jokes out of doggie behavior.  Things like Snoopy hearing and smelling food and running over to beg started almost from the beginning.  As did they ways that Snoopy interacts and often drives the other characters crazy.

peaWhat’s mostly different about the early ones is that the kids are all mean to each other and CB sometimes wins in the verbal sparring.   He’s as much of a buster as the others.  It’s really fun and funny. (more…)

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Jennifer L. Holm & Matthew Holm–Babymouse: Skater Girl [#7] (2007)

Posted in Cats, Children's Books, Cupcakes, Figure Skating, Funny (ha ha), Graphic Novel, Ice Skating, Jennifer L. Holm, Matthew Holm, Mice, Rush, Short Books on August 30, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: RUSH-“Not Fade Away” (1973).

I never understood this song.  Grammatically it drives me nuts.  “Love is real, not fade away.”  Why would someone write that?  Anyone with even a rudimentary grasp of English would know that that is just a horrible way to speak.  Okay, I got that off my chest.

So this is the first single that Rush ever released.  You can find out information about it on the web (of course, I didn’t know it existed until a couple of days ago).

What we get here is a pretty rocking version of this rock n roll standard.  The band has some nice group vocals on the chorus.  I like the echoed chanting of the chorus before the solo kicks in.  And I love the rough sound that Alex’s guitar has as the song opens.

As I noted the other day with the concert from circa 1974, the band was really all about Alex’s guitar work back then.  Geddy doesn’t do anything impressive on the bass (a couple of fills, but nothing special).  But Alex’s guitar solo is amazing (and you can hear snippets of future guitar solos buried in this solo).

It’s funny to me that when they recorded their covers EP Flashback, that they didn’t include this song, too.

Check it out:

The B-side comes tomorrow!

[READ: March 12, 2011] Babymouse: Skater Girl

Well, fair enough, I said that I liked Babymouse: Dragonslayer because it had a plot.  This story has a plot, too.  Interestingly, it ties in kind of nicely to the Dragonslayer story, too.  (It’s all about winning something).

As the story opens, Babymouse feels bad because she never wins anything.  She’s looking at all of the trophies which she has not won; then there’s an amusing fantasy of all the things she has won (honorable mention for spelling the word “the” correctly; honorable mention at the swim competition for “getting wet”; and amusingly, archenemy Felicia Furrypaws’ trophy for worst whiskers).

But despite her complaints about not being good at anything, we quickly see that she is actually very good at ice skating.  She rules the pond in town–until the big hockey players crash into her, that is).  She even daydreams of winning a skating trophy. (more…)

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Roberto Bolaño–The Skating Rink (1993) [translated 2009]

Posted in bolanobolano.com, Chris Andrews, Death, Figure Skating, Hüsker Dü, Infinite Zombies, Marriage Trouble, Poets, Punks, Roberto Bolaño, Short Books, The Dead Milkmen, Translation, Translators, Violence on April 9, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE DEAD MILKMEN-Eat Your Paisley (1986).

Who has angered the volcano gods?

My friend Paula is the only person I know who truly appreciated the Dead Milkmen.  And we spent many a car trip singing/shouting lyrics like “B.F. Skinner has eaten my dinner” (“Where the Tarantula Lives”).  While this may not be great literature or even terribly clever, there’s not too many songs (punk or otherwise) who name check B.F. Skinner.  So there.

Of course, “Beach Party Vietnam” is not quite as clever, although

– Hey Frankie, aren’t you gonna give me your class ring?
– Oh I’m afraid I can’t do that, Annette
– Why not?
– ‘Cause I don’t have any arms!

Never fails to entertain.

This second Milkmen disc jumps light years above the first.  The band sounds more accomplished, the recording is fuller and the lyrics are more bizarre and often funnier.  Rodney Anonymous Melloncamp does wondrous things with his vocal stylings (he’s still very bratty, but he does different “accents” this time).

It even features an interesting instrumental “KKSuck2” which, while under 2 minutes, holds up quite well as a solid song. And there’s some fun being poked at Hüsker Dü on “The Thing That Only Eats Hippies” (“Now it’s got  a sweet tooth for long hair so Bob and Greg and Grant you should beware.”)

Joe Jack Talcum is featured on vocals on “I Hear Your Name.” (a rather tender ballad) and on prominent background vocals on the wonderfully chaotic and super fun to sing along to “Two Feet Off the Ground.”  And “Moron” has the delicious opening verse: “Hanging out on the commode listening to Depeche Mode.”

Only six songs are under two minutes here, and that’s a good thing: their songs seems more fully realized (with actual parts!).  “Earwig” has three  different sections, even.  And while two songs are around 5 minutes long, the bulk are just under 3, the perfect length for a punk pop song (well, not quite pop, but at least pop-skewering.)

This is definitely the album to pick up for early DM fun.  ‘Scuse me while I puke and die (ha ha ha ha).

[READ: March 31, 2010] The Skating Rink

I simply can’t keep away from Bolaño these days.  I don’t even love 2666 and yet I’m very happily tracking down Bolaño’s other books, starting with this one.  (Which I guess technically is his third written novel if this bibliography is true–and why wouldn’t it be?).

This story is written in a fascinating way:  There are three narrators.  Each gets a chapter (from 1 to 10 pages) to tell the next part of the story.  The narrators are: Remo Morán, Gaspar Hereda and Enric Rosquelles.

As the story opens we learn pretty quickly that a murder has taken place.  But we don’t learn any details at all.  We also learn that the titular skating rink is going to play an enormous part in the story.  The story is set in Spain in the city of Z (which is quite close to the cities of X and Y).

In the first story line, we learn that Gaspar has gotten a job from Remo.  He knew Remo a long time ago, and when he returned to town, although he didn’t seek Remo out, it was quite fortuitous that they were acquainted.  And this job is as a night watchman at a local vacation campground.  He hangs out with El Carajillo and learns the ins and outs of the camp.  Eventually he becomes infatuated with two women, an opera singer and her younger charge.  He shares many conversations with the younger woman, and she seems (distantly) fond of him. (more…)

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Curling! Congratulations Kevin Martin

Posted in Cheryl Bernard, Curling, Evan Lysacek, Figure Skating, Hockey, Ice Dancing, Johnny Weir, Kevin Martin, Olympics, Scott Moir, Tessa Virtue on February 28, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Eight years ago, during the winter Olympics, I fell in love with curling. The strategy was amazing, the excitement, yes, excitement of an end coming down to one final stone, and the total coolness of seeing one stone take out 4 others blew my mind.

I joined the Plainfield Curling Club and played for two years there.  Then I had kids and put aside my Olympic aspirations. But I still love watching a bonspiel.

And this years’ Olympics were amazing!  The caliber of play was fantastic and watching Kevin Martin go undefeated for his first gold was spectacular.  Kevin Martin showed poise and grace and proved to be my favorite Olympic athlete of the games.  Sorry Sean White, your jumps were definitely awesome, but they don’t compare to winning eleven matches in a row.  And remaining very cool under pressure.

Fellow Canadian skip Cheryl Bernard also played an amazing Olympics.  She played some fantastic matches, pulling out a number of squeakers and shooting an amazing percentage.  Her miss in the final end to send it into extras, and her miss in the extra end belied a fantastic tournament.  And, I have to say the gold medal game was a crushing defeat.  Not to take anything away from the Swedish team who played wonderfully.  I would have just loved to see a Canadian sweep of gold.

Cheryl Bernard proved to be my second favorite Olympic athlete (Johnny Weir & Evan Lysacek (with his feathered hands) were also favorites and the ice dance team of Tessa Virtue & Scott Moir were also quite tremendous).

This was a really great Olympics, and we haven’t even seen the hockey results yet!

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